Landscape lighting has become a specialized field in recent years in which experts require various types of lights in order to create the effect they are seeking. There are two primary purposes for landscape lighting: safety and beauty. Lighting can enhance the safety of a building by illuminating walkways and entrance ways, ensuring that a person can see obstacles, and removing some hiding areas for intruders.
Lighting further enhances the beauty of a building. Without lighting, a home and all of its architectural and landscaping details fade into the night. Lighting allows people to enjoy a building's features and landscaping even into the evening hours. Properly placed lighting adds curb appeal and creates a welcoming atmosphere for a home.
Various lighting systems exist, including post lights, lights mounted on walls around or over doorways. One such system is taught by U.S. Pat. No. 5,599,091 to Kira. These type of systems teach the use of incandescent or halogen illumination for walkways, doorways, or architectural or landscape features. However, these types of lighting systems have several drawbacks.
Lighting systems first need to be durable. A lighting system needs to be able to withstand years of variable weather, ranging from blistering heat to freezing cold, from high UV exposure from sunshine to moisture exposure from rain, snow and sleet. A quality lighting system cannot fail after only a few years due to materials.
Further, the use of incandescent or halogen bulbs also is problematic. These bulbs generate a significant amount of heat, restricting the type and size of the casing around these bulbs. Further, these bulbs have a relatively short life span, necessitating replacement. This can be both time consuming and dangerous if such lights are mounted in an elevated position such as on the soffit of a building.
Other lights which are within the art include recessed light fixtures that fit within a soffit of a building. An example of such a system is taught by U.S. Pat. No. 6,000,818 to Calouri. The problem with these type of systems is that they are not adjustable in the area which they light. These systems point straight down and create a cone of light under the fixture.
For landscape lighting a fixture should be adjustable. This first allows landscape or architectural features to be highlighted. Secondly, as elements change, such as when trees or bushes grow, it is desirable to adjust the lighting of these elements. The shortcoming of existing soffit solutions is that they do not allow this flexibility.
A third desirable feature of landscape lighting systems is that they be discrete. These systems should not draw attention to themselves during the day. For fixtures such as those illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,091 to Kira, their size makes them difficult to hide or affix discretely.
Discrete lights are also important at night. A fixture should minimize glowing or drawing attention to itself. The problem with UV resistant plastics is that they transmit light. One possibility for preventing this is the use of an internal coating. However, internal coatings which would come to the inner edge of an outer shroud are more visible during the daytime, making the fixtures less discrete.